How our relationships teach us about
ourselves
Many of us are looking to change something in our
lives. Have less stress and anxiety,
feel better, be happier, increase confidence, know our life path, and
more. Yoga and meditation are really
fantastic tools to help us with these things and so much has been written on
how and why they help. So I won’t focus
on that here. But if we really want to
change our external world and not just our internal world, we need to take what
we learn in our practice and bring it out into the world and the path to doing
this is through relationship.
To do this, we start to become more mindful and aware of our
relationships. We have a relationship
with everything. We have a relationship
with our partner, our friends, our kids, co-workers, “strangers,” money, the
unknown, our home, nature, technology, our possessions, everything. We can’t fully know ourselves unless we know
ourselves in relationship to “other.” It
is so easy to continually seek the peace we can find on the mat or the
cushion, but then it can become an escape, something we do outside of our world. When our practice is only solitary and
focused on seeking peace, it is easy to become trapped in our own patterns and
our practice is disconnected from the world.
When we take that present focused, open, curious, non-judgmental
attitude of our practice out into the world and into our relationships, we are
able to more fully see ourselves.
Most writing on
relationship is targeted toward lovers
simply because this is sadly the only relationship many of us are willing to
risk intimacy with, and even then many of us still don’t. But it is a huge mistake to withhold or limit
our intimacy. Through intimacy, honesty,
and awareness, relationship is a huge mirror for us to really see ourselves in
ways we are able to ignore when we try to do it all ourselves.
Michael Stone, in his
book Awake in the World writes:
Yoga is the expression of intimacy in every one of our actions in three
spheres: body, speech, and mind.
Intimacy does not simply refer to sex. I translate the word yoga as “intimacy” to connote the fact
that everything is inherently contingent on everything else, from the basic
molecules and strings that hold the world together all the way to the familial
bonds that give rise to families and character.
When we see that interconnectedness runs through each and every thing we
encounter, we begin to see that entering
our lives fully is the deepest kind of intimacy we can ever encounter (emphasis
added). In fact, in order to heal, we
need to find an intimate connection to whatever it is that ails us.
When we expand our
definition of relationship, we can choose to be in authentic, intimate
relationship with anybody or anything. Just
as intimacy is not about sex, authentic, intimate relationship need not be
limited to just one person as we so often assume. To be in authentic relationship takes trust,
openness, honesty, and willingness. We
can say to ourselves, “I’m not going to be authentic with this person because I
don’t trust them,” but really that is just placing blame and responsibility for
our trust on someone else. Ultimately,
we only need to be trusting, willing, and open with ourselves.
The first step is being fully honest and intimate in our
relationship with ourselves. By sitting
with ourselves in acceptance of whatever we are feeling, in the calm, peace,
and happiness we seek, but also the agitation, fear, judgments, aloneness, sadness,
and frustration. For years I used to use
mindfulness practice such as yoga and meditation as a form of disassociation –
I would just concentrate on something as a way to block out what I was really
feeling. There is value in being able to
not identify and define ourselves by our thoughts and feelings, but we can’t
just ignore them forever either. I was
being distant with myself, rather than intimate. I would dismiss feelings or negative parts of
myself as being undesirable. But this is
a goldmine of information and exactly what we need to pay attention to in order
to move closer to what we are seeking.
As they say, “The only way out is through.”
John Wellwood writes, “Each of us has these two forces at
work inside us: an embryonic wisdom that wants to blossom from the depths of
our being, and the imprisoning weight of our karmic patterns. From birth to
death, these two forces are always at work, and our lives hang in the balance.
Since human nature always contains these two sides, our journey involves
working with both.” When we can be with
ourselves fully and look at our patterns, both the ones we like and the ones we
don’t, and be with whatever we are feeling with acceptance and curiosity, we
can then bring our practice into the world.
And through this intimate knowing of our patterns, we are able to take
them off auto pilot and touch more deeply the peace and wisdom that we seek
through our practice.
Once we begin deepening the
relationship with ourselves, we can become more aware in our relationship with
our partner or closest friends. When we
can take this same level of intimacy to our relationships with other people, we
can start to see even more clearly our patterns and how they help us and how
they limit us. Through speaking our
truth in the moment, we expose ourselves in ways we can’t in solitary
practice. We can then see the reactions,
reflections, and support of the “other” which helps us work more fully with
what is inside of us.
The
one who has a good
friend doesn't need
any mirror. ~Rumi
We can choose to be intimate – that is open, honest, and
vulnerable with whomever or whatever we want.
And it is through this type of relationship that we become more fully
exposed to and aware of our programming as we move through our daily
lives. As we do this, is important too
to be gentle, patient, and loving with ourselves too, as we start to see
ourselves more clearly. It is only with
this patience and self-love that we can start to change our patterns. If we
fight them or dislike them, they only grow stronger. And by being more transparent with others, we
open ourselves up to the possibility of healing through being seen and accepted
even in the things we don’t want people to see.
Being someone who tops the charts on the Meyers-Briggs
introversion scale, I can tell you that it is scary to risk sharing in this way
with even those closest to us. And I
know it is scary for the extroverts too, this level of deep sharing. But when we bring this practice into our
relationships, we get real world application, we get triggered, and we get to
look in the mirror in a much stronger way then we will ever achieve practicing
alone. I have found the benefits are
well worth the risk and fear. It is a
practice in and of itself to try to do this consistently.
Every moment of our day is ripe with reflections of our
patterns and opportunities to practice.
For example, just today I was talking to someone who knows I bike commute
most of the time and he said “Be careful at the bike rack, if I rode today.” With those last four words, I noticed myself get
tense, my throat clenched, my arms and shoulders pulled slightly in, and my
stomach tightened. I chose not to respond
to his statement and admit that I drove, but rather changed the subject to
something else. I later asked myself “What
was that about?” It was not the first time I’ve seen myself do that, and I
realized it was one of my old patterns of wanting to be liked and wanting to be
seen as a “good person” so my strategy is to not say anything that could
disprove that. In this case, I want to
be seen as someone who selflessly rides my bike everywhere for the environment,
but the truth is I drive sometimes, and feel bad about it or maybe I feel bad about
not living up to my image of myself. By
witnessing myself in that interaction I got to see my pattern shown to me, but
I missed out on being honest about my decision to drive, which may have led to
him admitting that he did too, or maybe even reassuring me I’m not a horrible
person because I drove today.
The more we choose to be honest, authentic, and intimate, the
more reflections we get, the more clearly we are able to see ourselves, and the
more chances we get to escape from our patterns. Each time we choose to be intimate, we get a
reflection that is colored by the person or object that is reflecting. So to really see ourselves clearly in
relationship, the more reflections the better so we can start to sort out what
is ours, what is theirs, and what doesn’t need to be there anymore.
The deep exploration of ourselves leads to deeper
relationships with people and the world.
And deeper relationships with the world lead to deeper exploration of
ourselves. There is no separation. To
focus on one to the neglect of the other leaves us only seeing part of the
picture. So let’s have courage and trust
in ourselves to be more fully open and intimate with all our relations – in our
relationship with ourselves and with “other,” so we can bring the changes we
seek both within ourselves and out into the world.
~chuck
What do you think? Let's continue the conversation! You can find me at
www.innerlifeadventures.com or email
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